Vista Uses Too Many Resources

Is it any wonder when a new laptop, running the Vista OS, with many hardware resources that I only dreamed about before taking the plunge and purchasing, runs too slow . . . not really. I just checked the “Task Manager” on the computer and out of 150 ”services” installed for whatever reasons, 88 of them are running, *and* 76 processes are running . . . and I am not even doing anything that is resource intensive. Prior to checking this I could not run “Flight Simulator X”, without having it crash (the program that is . . . not the aircraft). There are not enough resources available to run “Flight Simulator X”. Also the task bar shows an icon that says “downloading”. Nothing else just “downloading”. Downloading what? The only clue from the Task Manager is that 1.03 GB of memory are being used (I have 2GB installed). And it has shown “Downloading” for 3 hours now!

I love my Ubuntu Linux desktop computer . . . it has less hardware resources available than my new laptop but runs flawlessly and at least an order of magnitude faster. How long will it be before I install Ubuntu on the laptop and scrap Vista? I don’t think it will be very long at all.

If It’s Spring . . . Why Is It Still Snowing?

In two days it will be April. Yesterday we ended about another one foot dump of snow . . . on top of the still existing four to five feet *everywhere*. This morning started with a temperature of -11 degrees Celsius.

I reorganized the gallery pages on my website to have “gallery 1” for recent artwork and “gallery 2” for retrospective artwork. Thus gallery 1 will be much more dynamic as it will only display a maximum of ten recent paintings at any one time.

My First Impression of Vista Home Premium

A couple of days ago I received my new Dell Notebook computer. It came loaded with Vista, Home Premium Edition. My desktop computer, also a Dell, has given up on Microsoft and is now a 100% Ubuntu Linux machine. In comparison, the new Vista OS can be considered what “Windows Me” was when it first became available. “Windows Me” is not supported any longer; I think Vista is soon going to meet the same fate.

My Vista machine came with Windows Work Suite 2006 which I did not install. I had Windows XP Office Pro, that I previously had on my now Ubuntu machine, and I installed it on the new laptop. How long will it be until I convert the new machine to Linux? More on this later. For now I will use Vista for reasons that include:

1. I am curious about Vista.
2. I need the Access Database until such time as OpenOffice Base Wizard works on Ubuntu.
3. I like to use MS Flight Simulator, and the Flightgear Simulator doesn’t work on Ubuntu yet.

To get Office XP working on Vista it was an exercise of:

1. “Click” and wait.
2. “Reboot”.
3. “Word” has stopped responding. Send an error report to Microsoft.
4. More “Click” and wait.
5. More “Reboot”.
6. “Updates Required”.
7. No Updates Required.
8. “Word” has stopped responding.
9. “Updates Required”.
10. More “Reboot”.
11. Wait . . . Wait Again . . .
12. “Reboot”.
13. Read Unnecessary Windows . . . over and over and over again.
14. Wait . . . Wait . . . and wait again.

I kept waiting for the message that said I should update to Office Vista. It never came but it seemed to be implied. The age old Microsoft Fix . . . “buy a new version”. Of course many new drivers are always required also . . . more delays and problems to get hardware working.

Finally, I have almost everything that I *need* working with the exception of an email problem that still haunts me and forced me to only use email on my desktop machine for now . . . thank you Ubuntu.

So far I am *not* impressed, and so far I can definitely *not* recommend Microsoft Vista. Vista may be the best thing that ever happened to Linux and to Apple.

The only reason keeping me from going “Ubuntu” on the notebook computer is the Access Database program and the Flight Simulator program. Once that functionality is fully available on Ubuntu . . . the notebook will shed Microsoft. I am assuming that Ubuntu will continue to improve as it has been up to now. I think the simple fact that I have *never* had to reboot the Linux machine says a lot about Linux reliability.

How is Ubuntu . . . now?

I have completely changed over to Ubuntu linux from XP and I am still very pleased with the OS. I have realized *only* one drawback to this date, and that is that many Ubuntu users, including me, have been unable to get the OpenOffice Base “Forms Wizard” working with Ubuntu. That has forced me to make a database for my artwork using html and Firefox, because that is easier for me, at this point, than trying to use the OpenOffice Base Forms Application in “Design View”.

I can understand, and I can see, that the Ubuntu development team is doing a *great* job and has come a long way in making what I think will be *the* linux OS for almost *everybody* to use, and I know that progress moves ahead with greater priorities at this time than “getting” the Forms Wizard problem solved. However, I think there are many of us that are looking forward to using a stable Forms Wizard with OpenOffice Base. It is certainly no reason to give up on Ubuntu. “Way to go” Ubuntu!

How Does Cost of Wine Differ Between Provinces?

How do Liquor Board prices for Opimian (The Wine Society of Canada) wine differ between Canadian provinces? Here is the price for 6 bottles of *Opimian Select* bottles of wine in each province. Alberta has the lowest price and Yukon has the highest price. This is how they compare:

Alberta $77, British Columbia $119, Manitoba $100, New Brunswick $118, Newfoundland $112, NWT $115, Nova Scotia $116, Ontario $99, PEI $124, Quebec $119, Saskatchewan $115, Yukon $129.

Below is the price for 6 bottles of *Founders Choice* Opimian wine in each province. Alberta again is significantly lower than the other provinces and Yukon is high, slightly below the price in Nova Scotia.

Alberta $117, British Columbia $206, Manitoba $194, New Brunswick $218, Newfoundland $205, NWT $166, Nova Scotia $232, Ontario $188, PEI $208, Quebec $192, Saskatchewan $187, Yukon $229.

Alberta prices certainly look good when compared to *any* other province.